


For Blood and Grain

by Gileonnen



Category: Coriolanus - Shakespeare
Genre: Fantasies of Damnation, Grief for the Fallen, Landscape Pornography, Multi, Nameless Wives Deserve Better, domestic abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-04
Updated: 2012-12-04
Packaged: 2017-11-20 06:08:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/582130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gileonnen/pseuds/Gileonnen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The night is quiet, as nights have not been quiet for years.  The grain is flourishing in the fields, tended by hundreds of hands now spared from war with Rome; the strong arm of the soldier bends to work the plough, that all may eat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Blood and Grain

In the darkness, his wife turns over and flings her arm over her eyes--she makes a low sound like terror, like surrender. He can read submission in the angle of her wrist and throat; they are not unfamiliar poses, and she wears them as easily in sleep as in waking. Even in dreams she is pursued and subdued, he thinks, and her sweet frail body lends itself unconsciously to her defence.

When he can bear her fear no longer, he stands from their bed and goes walking.

The night is quiet, as nights have not been quiet for years. The grain is flourishing in the fields, tended by hundreds of hands now spared from war with Rome; the strong arm of the soldier bends to work the plough, that all may eat. This was the last act, then, of Caius Martius Coriolanus: the endless fields rippling in the light of his lantern, and the grapevines hanging low.

Martius had praised the fertility of the land, once, in the same sanguine humour that seized him when he praised a fine horse or a brave charge. Even then, Aufidius had dreamed of watering the ground with his fine Roman blood.

Aufidius wonders whether the fields of Latium are mazy with corn, whether the hungry plebeians have enough to fill and stop their mouths. _So be it, if they do_ , he thinks. Those gaping mouths would have devoured Martius, and he cannot find it in him to begrudge them that.

His lantern draws flickering shadows among the grape leaves, great fans of darkness spilling across the earth below and smooth curves of light caught suspended at his shoulder. He reaches out to pluck a bunch of grapes, and the stem comes away easily in his hand. The rest of the grapes will become wine, trampled gladly and then stored away for ages to become rich and heady; this handful, at least, he will snatch away in its prime. The first grape tastes sweet in his mouth, rich dark juice staining his hand like blood in the darkness. The rest are bitter.

From there the path wends east between others' fields, others' houses, to the very marshes of Volsci. If he followed that well-trampled earth for miles, he would find himself skirting soft, rich, shifting ground, fecund and foul, riotous with green. Aufidius is not a stranger to this land, and in daylight he might have done it--but should he lose his lamp, should he put a foot upon a serpent, he would never return again. Caution is accounted cowardice only by those who have never ventured and lost.

Instead he turns, wading hip-deep in grain, an island of light in the darkness.

It was a small thing, to have set the mob upon Martius. They had seized him, stabbed him, crushed him under busy bare feet and rough peasant sandals; the soldiers had driven their weapons into his body again and again, with a passion that was more than hatred. That tattered body had been the foundation of a free Volsci, the sacrifice that had placated cruel Mars and fatted Ceres. To have killed him, and trodden on his body, was the smallest of things. For that, the grain grows, and women call out to one another unafraid in the cities. For that, his wife is quiet and pliant beneath him at night.

She no longer speaks of the nights he spent out of her bed. She has learned to be wiser than that.

As the northwest boundary of the fields there is a cliff overlooking the sea, its crest hunched up like the back of an old cripple. When he was a child (when the cliff was endlessly vast and high), Aufidius used to climb to the summit with his dagger and stare out over the coast. He imagined that he could see the lights of Rome, far in the distance, and in his fervor he cut his palm and swore vengeance against the oppressors whose very name made his mother's face grow grey with fear. He had knelt there and sworn his fealty to Mars, and vowed that he would trample the corpses of the Romans beneath his feet.

Now, as he ascends that low cliff, he knows that the lights in the distance are only Volscian watchmen's fires along the cliffs of Antium.

He places his lantern on a smooth, broad stone, and stands there with the night air cool on his face. There are watch fires lining the shore, and lanterns in the village; there are little islands of light all around him. His light blows out.

At his back, there is the great vastness of the ocean.

Perhaps, here, he can sleep at last. With the precipice guarding one flank and all of Volsci guarding the other, perhaps even a vengeful spirit might pause, prudently, hand falling away from his sword. Perhaps that spirit might lie beside Aufidius, as exhausted as he by their striving, and clap a hand on his arm like a comrade. They had often lain beside one another so, in their peace, tracing the wounds that they had given one another as though something of themselves was written there.

The men had murmured uneasily at that union, made low, laughing remarks about mistresses and which general had covered the other and made him beg for satisfaction; they thought him deaf, or deafened, all sly tongues and flashing eyes and fingers illustrating artfully. They guard their tongues better now--those who still have them.

He lies upon his back, staring up at the great arc of the stars overhead. There are warriors mapped there, and lovers, and warrior-lovers cut down in their prime. Beneath their eyes he might find absolution, or if not absolution, then satisfaction; he might challenge them to pass judgment upon him, they who spurned jealous men and virtuous women alike.

The waves breathe roughly at his side, and with that rough breath to ease him, he sleeps at last.

In his dreams, the fields burn around him as he and Martius grapple in Hell.


End file.
